Plain Kate

The rain drizzled down. Plain Kate got soaked and began to ache: She was strong, but walking was unfamiliar work. The straps of her pack basket rasped her thin shoulders. Taggle spent the day asleep inside the basket, just between her shoulder blades. His warmth made her hurt less.

Finally they stopped, deep in the summer evening.

Through the day the country had thinned into a strip of fields between the river and the heavy, wooded darkness of the hills. And now there was nothing but woods and water.

They stopped in a patch of meadow, sending deer leaping into the woods and rabbits scampering. There was a scrambling between Kate’s shoulder blades, and, a moment later, a cat on her shoulder. “Rra—” he started, and Kate was sure he was going to say “rabbits,” but he stopped, peered at Daj watching them, and said, “Meow.”

“Now that,” said the old woman, “is a soft way to travel. Hello, king of cats.”

Taggle preened and leapt down, heading over to twine around Daj’s ankles.

The Roamers set camp in two rings and built two big fires. Plain Kate and Drina were sent to fetch water, then again to find fallen branches for the fire. When they came back the horses were picketed and the chickens were loose, the rugs laid, the pots bubbling. Trestle benches had appeared. Plain Kate sank onto one of them and pulled off her damp socks. Her feet were wrinkled with wet and had a dozen dead white blisters big as thumbprints.

“Goose grease,” said Daj. She was squatting by the fire, stirring a sliced onion around in a pan. “Tomorrow I’ll get you some grease for your boots, to keep the water out. Silly not to think of it before.” She gave the pot of goulash a poke and stood up, creaking. “Tonight we will go to the men’s fire. Let me present you to Rye Baro.”

Plain Kate was startled by present. People got presented to the mayor or the guild masters or the lord executioner. “Who is Rye Baro?” she said.

“Baro means big man, and Rye is our Baro: the leader of these vardo—wagons, that is. If you go our way, you’re his to judge, his to keep or turn loose.”

Kate stood up and squared her thin shoulders. “Will he turn me loose?”

“Oh, no,” laughed Daj. “He’ll not say no to me.”

Kate thought she didn’t sound entirely sure.

“Sit and let me see those feet, kit,” rumbled Daj. Kate sat. Daj lifted her feet in her hands. “You can’t go among the men bleeding,” she said, and Kate saw that, indeed, her heel was blistered deep and seeping blood. It didn’t hurt much more than any other part of her feet, and she hadn’t noticed. But Daj was wrapping it with a scrap of green scarf.

Kate was embarrassed. “It’s not bothering me.”

Daj shook her head. “Among the Roamers blood is powerful,” she said. “A woman’s blood specially. Some women can work great magics while in their blood—scares the menfolk down to their socks, knowing that. When we get our monthly blood, they make us sit where they can keep an eye on us.”

“I’m not, though,” said Kate. “I can’t do magic. I’m not a witch.”

“And I’m not a muskrat,” said Daj. “But neither one of us will walk about bleeding. I’ll explain our ways, town child, when I think of it, but whether you understand them or not, you must respect.”

“I—” Plain Kate began, but Daj silenced her with a finger on her cheek. Kate found herself fixed on the texture of Daj’s hands: so calloused and worn with work that they were glossy-smooth, like the inside of an ox yoke or the edge of an oarlock. Smooth as dry dust. Her father’s hands had been a little like that. Such hands had not touched her in a long time. Daj tucked Kate’s frizzing hair behind her ears. “Come with me now, mira. I’d say be brave, but that I can see you are.”

¶

Daj led the way from one fire to another, and Kate followed her, feeling the soaked, loamy earth give like soft bread beneath her feet, feeling the bandage on her heel grow loose with wet. She was trying to take in the labyrinth of rules Daj was telling her: Don’t pass between a man and a fire. Don’t walk between two men who are facing each other. Ask permission to speak. If you walk near a man, gather up your skirt so that it does not brush him.

“I don’t have a skirt,” said Kate. She was wearing, as always, the striped smock that had been her father’s. It skimmed her knees, but it was no dress. Among the bright layered scarves of the Roamers, the russet and indigo stripes seemed drab.

“Ah, so you don’t,” said Daj. “Well, don’t mind it, child. For here we are.” And Kate followed Mother Daj into the circle of firelight as silently and solemnly as if into a church.

There were only a few men about; Plain Kate could hear them farther off, moving among the horses. But to her surprise, Behjet was sitting on a stone near the fire, whittling. He looked up at her, cold and blank, as if he didn’t know her at all. Could this be courtesy? It was like a door slammed in the face.